Has the graded ticket market slowed down? Sales are up 28% year on year

The claim. Under our post on the five biggest graded ticket profits, a collector wrote that the market for ticket stubs has slowed down considerably, apart from a few iconic investment stubs bought by people who do not seriously collect tickets, and that PSA's faster turnaround probably reflects fewer submissions. The first two points can be tested against the sales we record. The third cannot: PSA does not publish submission volumes for tickets, and the population report only ever grows, so it says nothing about pace.

The method. Two windows of twelve months, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 and 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. June 2026 is the last full month our eBay record covers, which is why the year ends there rather than at the day of writing. One row is one recorded sale of one graded ticket: multi-ticket lots are excluded, and so is a single sale recorded in euros. Read on 24 September 2026 from 48,400 recorded sales across Heritage, Goldin, Fanatics Collect, Lelands, Robert Edward Auctions, Huggins & Scott, SCP, Clean Sweep, Christie's and eBay. Nine of the ten houses appear in both windows; Christie's adds four lots to the current one.

More graded tickets sold in ten months out of twelve

The count went from 6,553 to 8,406. It is not one month and it is not one house. January was the widest gap, 759 sales against 398, and the current year is ahead in every month except March (654 against 663) and May (752 against 836). eBay is the one source recorded the same way in both windows, a single continuous feed rather than a house calendar, and it alone grew 24%, from 3,474 sales to 4,303, with its median moving from $157.50 to $167.51.

Nine houses out of ten sold more

SCP is the exception, six fewer sales, and REA took less money on 80% more lots. Everywhere else both the count and the money rose. Heritage's money more than doubled, $1,854,528 to $4,595,807, and that is where most of the market's extra $4.4 million came from.

The median rose without the trophies

The median is the middle sale, so a $366,000 stub moves it no more than a $36 one does. It went from $199.99 to $228.77. The quartiles moved with it: a quarter of sales were under $83 before and under $98 now, a quarter were over $499.99 before and over $561.20 now. Drop every sale of $10,000 or more and the median still rises, $199.00 to $224.72, and the money in what is left grows 42%, $3,398,030 to $4,825,177. Sales under $1,000, which is most of them, went from 5,723 to 7,173.

The comment is right about where the money went. Sales of $10,000 or more were 1.1% of sales and 37% of the money in the earlier year; they are 1.5% of sales and 51% of the money now. The top band grew fastest on every measure. But the other three bands grew too, in count and in dollars, so the growth at the top is on top of a base that also got bigger, not instead of one.

The record sale both years is the same ticket

PSA 1.5, $324,000, Heritage, August 2024

PSA 3, $366,000, Goldin, December 2025

The earlier year's record was a PSA 1.5, cert 74028929, sold at Heritage for $324,000 on 25 August 2024. The current year's was a PSA 3, cert 75815539, sold at Goldin for $366,000 on 7 December 2025; the same slab had made $300,000 at Heritage in August 2023. Neither beat the ticket's own record, $480,000 for a PSA 2 at Heritage in February 2022, cert 63803336. The game on the population report.

Ten six-figure sales against two

Five of the ten are the Michael Jordan NBA debut stub, and four of those five carry consecutive cert numbers, 111581484 to 111581487, one submission graded together and sold through Heritage between August and December 2025. The ten sales total $2,139,880, 22% of the year's money, against $510,000 and 9% the year before. That is the concentration the comment describes, and it is real. It sits on top of 8,396 other sales that also grew.

On the sales we record, the graded ticket market did not slow down in the twelve months to June 2026. It sold 28% more tickets, at a 14% higher median, for 81% more money, and the part of it under $1,000 grew 25%. What changed is how much of the money the top end takes: a tenth in the earlier year, a fifth in this one.